Tiivistelmä

The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to make the reader familiar with the growth hacking concepts and the usage of certain hacks in start-ups. VaseForoosh.com at IranAuto Oy Company has been the practical case throughout the studies. VaseForoosh meaning ‘For Sale’ in Persian, is a website similar to Nettiauto in Finland, mainly with the purpose of trading cars and bikes online in Iran. The website has been up since 2011 but haven’t gained enough audience for its services. The aim is to grow the number of users and visitors, while building more traffic using growth hacking experiments.

Growth hacking is a marketing method widely used in start-up companies. The main objective is to gain exposure and expand the audience using the analytical thinking and social metrics. This can be really important for the start-ups that has a low budget and can’t afford to use expensive ways of marketing such as TV or Radio. So instead of traditional methods we are trying to use social media and viral marketing. A lot of companies such as Dropbox, Facebook and Airbnb have been using complex methods of growth hacking techniques. Our aim was to study such companies’ methods and apply those studies to our research and strategies. We will also get to know how Iranians will get influenced by this growth hacking experiment, since the marketing culture and techniques can be quiet different there at times.